Michael Howard, former leader of the British Conservative party, now
Lord Howard, told the BBC on Monday that it would be disgraceful for “a
UK government (he meant a Labour government) to be dependant on a party
which was determined to break up the UK”.

We’ve been here before. Remarkably his words are exactly the same as
those his Conservative predecessors used in 1910 to oppose the Liberal
government’s Home Rule bill.

The result of the December 1910 election was: Conservatives of various
hues 272, Liberals 272, a dead heat. Redmond’s Irish Party plus William
O’Brien’s Munster-based All-For-Ireland League mustered 82. The Labour
party had 42.

To the outrage of the Conservatives the Liberal leader Asquith (pictured) made a
deal with the Irish to enable him to govern in return for supporting
Home Rule. Many Conservatives argued later in 1911 that it was
unconstitutional for the Liberals to bring in the Parliament Act which
removed the Lords’ veto because it was possible only with Irish support
and the Irish were supporting it only to break up the UK. The
Conservatives objected that the Liberals had no mandate for such
constitutional change because they had not won the election.

You’ll hear exactly the same arguments in six to eight weeks time if the
outcome of the British election is anything like polls suggest. For some
weeks now polls have shown both Conservatives and Labour winning around
280 seats, well short of the magic 326, though incidentally since Sinn
Fein don’t take their seats, 320 would do for a Commons majority because
the speaker isn’t included. For months polls have also shown the SNP
slaughtering Labour in Scotland winning more than 40 seats. The polls
haven’t shifted or faded and no-one predicts they will before May 7. Add
40 and 280 and you see why Cameron sounds desperate.

This election is going to confirm a change in British politics which has
been happening for at least a decade indicated among other results by
the Liberal surge in 2010 which Nick Clegg squandered. The Conservatives
are besieged by UKIP in England. UKIP will cause the Conservatives to
lose more seats than they will win from the Conservatives. Labour used
to take Scotland and Wales for granted but no longer. The voters are
looking for radical change but are divided about how to achieve it.

One change is certain, however, and that is more devolution as people in
Scotland and Wales flee from Conservative austerity and Labour’s
cowardly austerity-lite. Needless to say the only exception is here. The
DUP is a far right party opposed not just to the 21st century but the
20th, mainly for religious reasons but these have social and economic
consequences too. The DUP actually agrees with austerity and supports
welfare cuts because their religious fundamentalism leads them to
support pie in the sky when you die rather than charity or ‘good deeds’
today. Their forefathers spread the same nonsense that grew into the
Bible Belt in America. Furthermore the DUP opposes any increase in
devolution in case it casts them adrift in the Atlantic with hordes of
native Irish. They oppose fiscal autonomy or powers to increase (or
lower) tax.

Yet it’s going to happen for the SNP and increasingly Welsh MPs will
insist on it.

Curiously that takes us back a century, too. Not many people know the
Gladstonian Liberals, including at one stage Asquith, advocated ‘home
rule all round’. The Scottish Home Rule Association was founded in 1886
and in 1894 the Welsh equivalent, Cymru Fydd. The Labour Party manifesto
in June 1918 promised home rule all round.

The rise of the Labour Party and power of trade unions in the 1920s
meant devolution wasn’t necessary in order to obtain social justice
because Labour dominated Scotland and Wales. Not any more and it’s
Labour’s fault since with ‘New Labour’ they deserted their natural
supporters.

The rise in support for devolution in Scotland and Wales mirrors the
decline of industry and trade unions.

A Labour government after May will have no alternative but to support
greater devolved powers for people in Scotland and Wales whose parents
would automatically have supported Labour but Labour has let them down
in the Blair years. Here unionist voters march to a different drum. They
don’t appreciate which side their bread’s buttered on.